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SUPERO C7Z370-CG-IW Z370 ITX Motherboard: Page 4 of 9

A Closer Look

SUPERO’s C7Z370-CG-IW is your traditional mini-ITX form factor board. The socket sits near the center of the board with a pair of full-size DDR4 DIMMs to the right, and a PCIe x16 below. You probably noticed by the picture, but all of the above are metal reinforced slots that also serve to shield the signals for an optimal experience. A single M.2 Slot is found on the front of the board just above the PCIe x16 slot, which overlaps the chipset heatsink once installed.

A 24-pin main power and 8-pin EPS connector sit along the edge of the board, and a quartet of SATA 6Gbps ports can be found on the bottom right side. A small VRM heatsink sits right behind the usual rear I/O area.

Similar to most well-equipped mini-ITX boards, there is quite a bit going on the back of the board. Besides a large number of components, another M.2 slot hides back here. All down the left side of the picture here are the RGB lights, 12 total across three lighting zones.

Rear I/O is comprised of four USB 3.0 ports, a pair of USB 3.1 gen2 ports, one of which is a type-C, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 connections, Intel gigabit ethernet, 8 channel audio as well as an optical audio output. A large part of this area is taken up with the WiFi and Bluetooth antenna mounts.

The server bloodlines are quite evident when looking closely at the board. Almost every single square inch is covered in either components or ports/headers/etc. Between the Front M.2 socket and the DIMM’s, we have a USB 3.0 front panel connection. Just above this sits a socketed BIOS chip with retention arm. A USB 2.0 front panel header sits just under the DIMM slots.

Another place the bloodlines are evident on the front panel I/O connections. While the typical Power and Reset Switches and Power and disk activity pins are here, you also get Overheat/fan failure and NIC activity lights as well. While there isn’t room for a standard 2-digit POST code display on this board, SUPERO did include 4 LED’s just above and right of the DIMM slots that indicate POST stages. CPU, DIMM (Memory) VGA and BOOT lights if remaining on can point you at a specific sub-system if there are issues. A 4-pin fan header also hangs out in this corner.

The gigabit ethernet port on the rear I/O Panel is powered by this Intel i219v chipset.

Audio duty is performed by Realtek’s ALC1220 audio codec which provides great sound and is found on many higher-end motherboards from most vendors these days. The front panel audio connections are close by, near the front edge of the PCIe slot.

The rear panel USB 3.1 Gen-2 ports are powered by ASMedia’s ASM3142, the latest chipset providing up to 16Gbps total throughput with a heavily reduced power consumption.

ASM’s 1543 chip handles the Type-C reversible connectivity.

The chip on the left here is Monolithic Power Systems (aka MPS) MP2955 VR13 series fully digital 6-phase power controller. Two of the six total mosfets pictured here are MPS M86908 but we were unable to find a datasheet to get specifics. The sole RGB header sits along the top edge of the board near the 8-pin EPS power connector.

System monitoring and control is handled by NuvoTon’s NCT6792 Super I/O chip.

A plethora of jumpers along the very bottom edge of the board does most of the configuration, and the blue jumper cap sits on the Clear CMOS jumper pins.

By default, the RGB lighting zones flash through multiple colors in a disco style across three distinct zones, pictured here lit up pink, purple and green.